The coagulation of blood is the initial phase of the biological repair process that responds to perforating trauma to the vasculature; its function is to stop blood loss from the circulatory system by establishing a temporary barrier between the intra- and extra-vascular compartments. Relatively unique levels of detail are available for this biological network concerning its cellular and protein components, connections between these components, and the dynamics characterizing their interactions. Because of this, descriptions of this overall reaction network have been advanced using ensembles of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) or more elaborate mathematical constructs for both closed and flow based model systems.
Dynamic coagulation reactions are always characterized in terms of separate metrics like rates, reaction extents and timing of events. There are a number of instrument based methods, such as for example thromboelastograhy and calibrated automated thrombography, that are marketed to access the coagulation status of patients. Many of these instruments provide a global assessment of a single coagulation profile (e.g., thrombin output) of individuals, but the data needs to broken down to specific metrics, each representing a fraction of the available information to compare individuals. This approach of data analysis complemented with standard statistical methods has made limited progress in identifying at risk individuals.
It thus would be desirable to provide new methods and systems that improve the resolving power of current methods that evaluate blood coagulation dynamics. It would be particularly desirable to provide such methods and systems where multiple selected measures characterizing individual coagulation profiles are integrated so as to provide an improved level of resolving power with respect to the differences between individuals including the potential for risk assessment of hemorrhagic and thrombotic events and the monitoring of anticoagulation. It also would be particularly desirable to provide such methods and systems in which multiple measures from any of a number of instruments known in the art (such as those identified above) and values from standard clinical tests (e.g., prothrombin time (PT), activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT)) can be repackaged, converted or the like into an integrated form that allows direct comparison to other individuals that are evaluated the same way. Additionally, it would be particularly desirable to provide such methods and systems that yield a visualization tool that represent the status of an individual's coagulation system, which in turn can allow monitoring and the visualization of an individual's blood coagulation profile or phenotype over time, while under anticoagulation, during surgeries, or other therapeutic interventions.